Topic: All-Encompassing E3 2018 Thread

@FragRed No, a variety of 3rd parties and Microsoft.

@MarcelRguez Actually for Bethesda, this is a fantastic piece of PR. I just saw the tweet they made from said game's Twitter account. They refocused the whole account based around the one tweet and it's gone down very well for them. No one else as far as I am aware is saying a word, not even people tweeting about the leak, though I dare look too much into it.

The Microsoft side makes sense outside of a likely typo, I mean all the Xbox community cares about is Halo, Gears of War and Forza anyway on the new 1st party front. If at least 2 of those isn't at an E3 presentation, it's considered a bad E3 (e.g. 2017).

@Grumblevolcano That is never a good scenario to be in, when your own fanbase just wants 2 or 3 games and that's it. But then, Microsoft hasn't really helped change this and it's something they seriously need to address.

@Grumblevolcano Good thing that I'm not that much of a hardcore Xbox community member, otherwise I might feel offended, since I've definitely played and would also want more than just those two games to play on my Xbox One...

@FragRed Didn't help how much they relied on 3rd party timed exclusives last gen and then shutting down studios they owned like Lionhead this gen.

@Grumblevolcano Shutting down studios and cancelling big much anticipated games like a certain Scalebound. And yes, Microsoft massively relied on third party exclusives last generation and I assume thought the same would work this time. However, poor early sales against a massively successful PS4 seems to have seen all their support dwindle. It's essentially Sony getting all the exclusives and timed deals now.

It also helped that Sony had screwed themselves over last generation with a very expensive to buy, and very difficult to develop for, console.

So with all these Walmart MS leaks: Any mention of an Elite Controller 2.0? It's clear the old one is being discontinued, no retailer ever has them in stock, and when they get them it's for, like, 3 days and then they're out for a month again, while even MS stores don't have them. It's either being discontinued entirely or a 2.0 has to happen. But they've been scarce all of 2018!

@ThanosReXXX As a newly re-minted XBox community member.....I forecefully applaud @Grumblevolcano' s comment. Gears and Forza.....meh. Halo's kind of fun snack food though.

@FragRed Yeah, they alternate (as does Nintendo) with major failures. Sony was arrogant after PS2's success and made a nightmare PS3 launch just as MS was rising. They handed 7th gen to MS on a silver platter (yeah they caught up late in the gen.) Then MS was arrogant from that and managed to make the X1 as undesirable as it could possibly be. Horrible leadership until Phil took over really hurt them long term. PS4 is fantastic right now, but I get this feeling the pendulum is swinging again. Sony's been hitting hard but they're in a safe space now, they keep showing the same games every year and are no doubt running thinner on them by now, meanwhile MS has been busy trying to save themselves in short order and being super customer friendly. If they play their cards right with Game Pass especially, while Sony's messing around with Gaikai/Now....I can see a shift. I see them having some good exclusives finally, but nothing on the level of Sony. MS seems to be doubling down on online-everything. Sony's still the home of solo movies you can play. Still, much like when Sony started closing the gap with win after win at the latter third of 7th gen, it would be cool to see MS do that this time. Nintendo's my safety net, but I'm interested to see what MS can do at their E3.

@NEStalgia That wasn't my point. The stereo-typing of what Xbox owners would want and would consider good, is.

Having said that, nobody can deny that Forza is the pinnacle of racing sims on any console. They've beaten Gran Turismo for several years now, so there's that.

And I understand that racing sims aren't for everyone, so if it's not your kind of game, then fair enough, but that doesn't mean that the game is bad in and of itself, and it definitely isn't. And for fans of the more arcade-like type of racer, there's always its spin-off series Forza Horizon, the current game of which also offers a Hot Wheels expansion, which honestly is crazy fun and a total blast.

And there are of course many more games to enjoy. Yeah, not as much as on "that other" console, but still: more than enough to offer something for everyone, but all that most complainers can always come up with is Halo, Gears and Forza, as if those are the only three games that are available on it. I find it all a bit pathetic, to be honest.

Anyway, now that you've joined the club, you'll find that no matter what game you'll play, be it first or third party, that you'll get the best performance and visuals out of them that current consoles can offer, bar none, so I'm all but sure that, if anything, that should at least be something to be pretty content and positive about...

@ThanosReXXX Hey, just because I just got the One now, this ain't my first XBox rodeo. The stereotyping is legit. It doesn't apply to me...but...yeah. Grumble forgot to include Fifa and Madden in the list though. Big omission. (OTOH if we were to stereotype PS gamers it would need Sailor Moon and Naughty Dog's IPs with Nolan North's face glued over Jak. )

At present I'm infatuated with the X since it's the new hotness. Overall I'm more a Japanese style gamer so Ninty and PS definitely offer more of what I tend to want....however, the X fills that "plays PC oriented games like a PC does" gap nicely My X library will probably be half the size of my PS library (just added Nier Automata last week) and I may have to rebuy a few things (now that I have an X, AC: Origins on the PS4 even though I already own it seems so wrong. I've looked at the comparisons.....they don't look so different, the game isn't as optimised for X as they promised....but the differences I do see, the PS version just bugs me. It's the foliage.

Still this is the first E3 in a long time I have a stake in all 3 shows and all third parties, so I'm kind of pumped to be following the MS hype train this year, especially while I'm expecting Sony's to be kind of on autopilot.

@NEStalgia I specifically mentioned 1st party in my comment.

@NEStalgia Legit? Depends on who you ask, and that's mostly non-Xbox owners. It isn't called stereo-typing for nothing. Next thing you know we're going back to the Xbox 360 era "they only have gray-brown dude bro shooters" complaints...

So, if we go that route, then I guess Nintendo only has Mario, Zelda and Kirby, and Sony only has... hm, what is it actually that they have? Sack Boy, the second-best racing sim and a truckload of cinematic quick time events?
EDIT:
Don't know about origins, but there's a considerable difference between the PS4 and Xbox One X version of Syndicate. Just look up some comparison videos on YouTube. But, in all fairness, it's not as big as the latest version of AC. That game shows a HUGE contrast between the two versions, even if you compare the X to the Pro, the X still wins by a street length.

@Grumblevolcano Fair enough. Though...it really does fit the stereotype too well. And considering the revolving door of management between the two firms, EA is kind of 1.5st party?

@ThanosReXX Well I can't look at the One from a non-360 era viewpoint yet. I've had it less than 24 hours. But as someone who had 2 360s over 6 years......."they only have gray-brown dude bro shooters"....well...the complaints weren't wrong... (Though honestly so did PS3...)

For the X, I mean it's under 24 hours and my games include BF1, For Honor, and AC: Syndicate. Next week it'll add MGS5. I mean the meme is real and pervasive even if it's false. There's not a shade of green or blue to be found in that list.

Hey, I came from the PC golden age. We did brown dudebro shooters before it was cool.

We all know every platform has every genre but it's kind of true, if you summarize what separates Sony/MS fans.....you picture the XBox fan as shooters and sports (and racing), and the Sony fans as cinematic story driven (and very very Japanese games) epics. And the brands both focus on that image to a degree (Sony really hypes their cinematics with theatrical E3 shows and performance art. XBox had a Porche on stage. They really do play to their stereotype....)

And then we look at the exclusives. Sony with Japanese/anime games, RPGs, GoW, Detroit the interactive novel. Then XBox with Crackdown, Halo, State of Decay (ok that one feels kind of Sony. Zombies = Sony is also valid ) they do reinforce those images. Sea of Thieves and Fable are the first departures from that mold in a long time.

Sony has....well....Sack Boy. Zombies. Dat Boi. And moody teenage dramas? And Sailor Moon. And half naked school girl Anime games....but Nintendo really has the market cornered on that. And Dissidia which I'm still totally miffed isn't on Nintendo. It really needs to be. I'd actually buy it there. And Persona...though that fits into the above category....but better. You're not wrong on the QTEs though. You really aren't.

Nintendo....well.....Mario, Zelda, Kirby.....cardboard.....and Smash which is all the above all at once? Clearly nobody bought it for South Park and Skyrim

AC Syndicate, yeah, visually it looks pretty different to my PS4 (phat) recollection from a year and a half ago. Origins, just looking at comparisons from DF, X and Pro are actually almost identical (some accused Sony of paying Ubi to keep the consoles parallel it was so similar.) This was shocking after Ubi hyped that it was so much enhanced on X. The final game actually doesn't look nearly as good as the version from E3 they showed "running on X1X" (which in hindsight looked better than the final PC version....typical Ubisoft.) It's really not very X1X enhanced at all, with no big difference vs Pro. HOWEVER, the foliage difference on Pro bothers me. It has "that Playstation look" foliage has. Bugged me on PS3 vs 360 too. (Note that's not an X1X problem, it's a Ubisoft problem. They said it would be very enhanced and it really isn't.) However, vs a standard/Slim/X1 PS4 I've heard the game runs pretty terribly with really awful framerate, so Pro or X is kind of minimal requirement for a really desirable experience. Check out DFs comparison. Other videos use that E3 footage that was clearly faked by Ubi (remember Watch Dogs?)...no way that was an X1. Even DF surmised it was a PC set to X1X spec.

@ThanosReXXX When you mentioned Syndicate, I got excited for a moment. Thought EA were bringing back the Syndicate series of games (the FPS doesn't count).

@NEStalgia Yeah that is totally true and if history were to repeat itself, I would say Sony would be arrogant enough to screw up with the PS5. But times have changed. Microsoft's Xbox One launch disaster has pushed them into a different direction. I am not saying that they are to scrap generational hardware, I think there is to be a successor on the way with backwards compatibility being a launch focus, but they are not in the same frame of mindset they once were. I think what Microsoft is looking at with their Xbox brand is now to be different to what Sony and Nintendo are focusing on.

@FragRed LOL that's what Thanos did to me when I mentioned Syndicate the other day in another thread

Yeah I agree that MS is trying to change direction....which is really cool, it's about time. That's honestly what they needed to do ages ago. The "PC twins" meme really said it all. My own thinking is they're moving on from real generational hardware and making it more PC like. Even Sony said they were moving that way but just looking at how PS4 has played out, and how MS moved to the 1 S and 1 X, I almost see Sony trying to stick with what has worked one more time and MS trying to move into paralell generations were the best from the old gen becomes the worst of the new gen, and 2 gens are paired together (so a period of the XB2 and the 1X playing the same games while the 1S is dropped.) Kind of what Valve tried with Steambox but failed badly. I could be wrong...but they finally joined the gen with viable hardware and didn't even release both editions in the same year. IMO, if they just treat the X like "oh that was just a 2 years top gap" they'd take themselves out of the race. They made a point to showcase it as its own thing, and I think they intend some logevity in it (could be wrong, but that would better fit the whole MS ecosystem as a whole.) And yeah I think "back compat" is going to be their schtick going forward. Why not, the consoles are just PCs now, and that's their strength. Sell more hardware more frequently but have a wider range of hardware prices to engage in their "ecosystem." At least until the next big leap in computing changes what's needed to run games.

@FragRed Yeah, sorry about that. @NEStalgia did the exact same thing to me and I explained him that this is why I don't like abbreviations or partial game names, and now I've done exactly the same to you, my bad.

And I was also thinking about the original Syndicate. Wasn't EA originally, though, it was from Bullfrog.

@NEStalgia Not just a Porsche:

With every new Forza or Forza Horizon game, they have a different car on stage. Often the flag ship car that also appears in the game. It's simply marketing.

I have no idea what "Playstation looking foliage" looks like, in comparison to other consoles...

As for that Assassin's Creed Origins comparison:
Seems to me that the tech heads at Digital Foundry are pretty clear on which console version is superior...

As for Watch Dogs: I've played it on my One S and it looks and plays/runs pretty good, with only minor hiccups. But Ubisoft did indeed fool the E3 audience by running the demo on a PC, so I could be persuaded to believe that they did the same with AC Origins...

"Hey nerds, here's this really expensive car you'll never be able to afford! Haha, suckers!"

@EvilLucario They did that to make the One X look affordable

@ThanosReXXX They're pretty clear the versions are pretty close At least in the written version of that writeup where the video came from.

Of course MS is having the same problems Sony has with PayPal. I can buy something one minute, then "problems with your payment method" the next. I blamed Sony. Apparently it's PayPal. Back to pre-paid cards....ugh. So much for superior network.

As for ubisoft, yeah they have a fine tradition of that. Even before the E3 watch dogs demo, the PS4 launch event the preceeding Feb highlighted the game like it was an exclusive. The whole thing was running on a PC. Ultimately by the time the game released even the actual PC version wasn't even close to what the two demos looked like. AC:O apparently did the same. This was their "this was running on an actual XBox One X" schtick to prove they learned their lesson. What comes to X1X? A version that looks like the PS4 version, not the version they showed. Worse, the PC version doesn't look close to what they supposedly ran on an X1X either. Even their "Usually we lie, but this time we're telling the truth" routine was just a lie. Ubi E3 is always an adventure.

@YummyHappyPills Compared to a gaming PC of similar spec it actually is. Not sure if that's a good thing about XBox or a bad thing about PC....but it is.